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In Munich, Leaders Say Goodbye to the Old World Order
Prime Minister Mark Carney was scheduled to deliver a much-anticipated speech to the Munich Security Conference this past weekend. The mass-casualty shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, changed that. Carney dispatched a senior delegation to Germany in his place—a crew that included Foreign Minister Anita Anand, Defence Minister David McGuinty, and Minister for AI and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon.
Understandable, given the circumstances, but unfortunate. Munich Security Conference is where the world’s power brokers gather each February to take the temperature of global order. If there was ever a conference the prime minister needed to be at, it was this one. Why? Because organizers decided to confront head-on the realities of the changes to international relations brought on by the Donald Trump administration.
In this, it has to be said, they are following in the footsteps of the speech that Carney delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21. That speech talked about the global rupture caused by the Trump administration and suggested there was no going back. It urged avoidance of nostalgia and talked of a necessary reframing of international relations led by coalitions of middle and other powers. Carney missed the opportunity to reinforce that message, especially to his European counterparts, and to start to build some of the coalitions he talked about.
To set the stage for its conference, the MSC issued a conference report in advance of the gathering. This year’s version is entitled “Under Destruction” and features on the cover an elephant with, what I take to be, several gouges out of its hide. Maybe it’s limping as well.
Right off the bat, the report describes Trump as a “demolition man,” not unique in that role but, by far, the most consequential actor on the world stage. It suggests the United States, under Trump, has jettisoned the foundational understanding of how multilateral institutions and universal rules, open trade, and liberal democratic principles all served as strategic assets for the US. The Munich conference report finds a new order taking shape, what it calls a “neo-royalist” and “deals-based” order, characterized by the emergence of accepted spheres of influence, “private rent-seeking and distribution by involved actors” and “deal-making on a personalist basis.”
As Prime Minister Carney did, it cautions against advancing “hope” as a strategy and urges those powers who wish to defend global institutions, rules, and norms to understand they will require substantive military capabilities and the ability to compete “across a range of strategic levers of power.”
As for Europe, the MSC report urges an understanding that “the era in which Europe could rely on the US as an unquestioned security guarantor is over.” But it also finds a Europe unsure of its footing, still torn between denial over the destruction of old norms of transatlantic security (“Pax Americana”) and acceptance of a changed reality, while facing an ongoing Russian threat with as-yet-inadequate strength. The MSC report offers sobering reflection that the continent is entering a “prolonged era of confrontation.”
Countries in the Indo-Pacific, particularly traditional allies of the United States, now face something similar to the European dilemma. They are finding Trumpian policy toward the region vacillating in nature, while facing punitive American tariffs themselves and attacks on their defence spending. The key problem facing the region is that, unlike Europe, it has no real co-operative security mechanisms, absent the US. For the Indo-Pacific, the rise of China as a regional hegemon, and the possibility of American acquiescence in that rise, means an “uncertain new security landscape.”
The US comes off its singular hot seat in the MSC report in the chapter on global trade. Here, it shares the blame with China for the undermining of a rules-based system and for the use of economic coercion. The report does see some hopes in the emergence of new trade partnerships and “smaller coalitions” designed to sustain open trade and a rules-based system. But it’s unsure how much hope to place in this—worrying that the global trading system might collapse “entirely into the law of the strongest.”
That law arrived in the form of a US delegation led by Secretary of State (and still acting National Security Advisor) Marco Rubio, now a dedicated Trumpian himself. Anticipation built for his must-watch Saturday address—scheduled, incongruously, for Valentine’s Day.
Would we see a horror show? Probably nothing like J. D. Vance’s brutal speech last year, where he accused Europe of committing slow suicide through migration. But at the end of this weekend, there likely might be blood on the floor. How much, and whose, remained to be seen.
The Trump administration footprint on day one was light, including lightweight Mike Waltz, the former national security advisor, banished to a role as the US ambassador to the United Nations. The day was book-ended by speeches from two key European leaders. German chancellor Friedrich Merz led off; France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, brought the day to a close. Merz spoke in German; Macron in English.
They had subtly different things to say about their view of a new Europe in the world and about the transatlantic relationship. Neither went after the United States, but both leaders had doubts about Trump administration policies. Neither was as strident as the independently written Munich Security Conference report had been—perhaps no surprise.
Merz referred, off the top, to the MSC report’s title, “Under Destruction,” and called it a grim motto. He went on to say, in an echo of Carney’s speech at Davos in January, that the international order no longer existed and had been replaced by the tensions of “big power” politics with efforts to shape spheres of influence and exploit the dependencies of others. Among the big powers, he was prepared to say that the United States’ claim to the top spot has been challenged [by China] and “possibly lost.”
Where did this leave Europe? Merz began a theme that Macron took up. European outlooks would be different from those in Washington, its politics and culture different. Europe would stand, he said, for freedom. As a continent, in which Germany is anchored, it has huge potential but needs, he said, to turn a “switch on” in our minds to realize that potential.
Merz’s agenda for Europe in an age of competing great power politics had some key pillars, including military strengthening, support for Ukraine, greater societal and economic resilience, and a new network of global partnerships.
Where does this leave transatlantic relations? With a fissure. Merz said, to applause, that MAGA politics were not for Europe, that Europe did not believe in tariffs and protectionism, and that Europe would stick to climate agreements and the World Health Organization. But he was not prepared to ditch transatlantic ties. He said that idea had not been properly thought through. Very German and dialectic.
His message to the US was twofold. Understand NATO to be the strongest alliance of all time and a competitive advantage for the US. This, followed by a warning—do not try to navigate the world alone, do not embrace a doctrine of “might is right,” one that is only too familiar from Germany’s history. He called this a dark path.
In the brief Q&A that followed, Merz laid out his vision of where the Ukraine war is headed. He said his view was that Russia would only end the war when it reached the point of economic and even military exhaustion. Russia, he said, had to give up its war with Ukraine. And Europe would have to support Ukraine in every way it could until that point of Russian exhaustion was reached. It wasn’t a picture of any early end to the war or any simple or quick-negotiated settlement, but it was a vision of some hope for Ukraine. It’s a European outlook that may be far from the thinking of American negotiators and their president.
President Macron came to the podium at the close of the first day with a determined message of hope. Like Merz, he painted a picture of European strength and called for a more positive outlook on the continent’s potential. He celebrated what he called Europe’s “radical construction” as a continent of free trade, the mobility of people, democracy, and peace between its constituent states.
He then turned to Ukraine and called it Europe’s existential challenge. In passing, he criticized US approaches to seeking peace in Ukraine, urging the necessity of not caving and of never praising Russia. Russia, he said, would face a reckoning when the war ended.
Macron reminded his audience that Europe was now Ukraine’s main financial and military backer and had to keep hitting the Russian economy with sanctions and to deal harder blows to the shadow tanker fleet which sustains Russia’s oil exports to the world. He talked about the importance of the coalition of the willing, and its contribution to security guarantees for Ukraine, but offered no new details of the forces that would be amassed of their deployment after a ceasefire.
The French president did say that the time had arrived for Europe to think about its security posture on the “day after” the Russian war in Ukraine ends. That thinking includes questions around European capabilities for long-range missile strikes, new arms control measures, and the role of nuclear deterrence.
Unlike Merz, who did not position Europe as a geopolitical player in a contest among the big powers, Macron was insistent that this must be Europe’s future. It would require stronger capabilities and what he called “de-risking” from the many dependencies that currently operate. He didn’t say de-risking from the US, but it was implied. But like Merz, he didn’t suggest the transatlantic relationship with the US was over, just that Europe would have to be respected as a partner.
If Merz channelled the history of a post-1945 European experiment, with Germany at its core, Macron channelled something of his inner de Gaulle, celebrating the independent spirit and potential of Europe.
The question that these speeches set was how they would align with the US vision presented by Rubio. Both Merz and Macron offered a picture of a strong Europe as an essential, advantageous ally of the United States, turning Trump’s grievance narrative and his disdain for the European contribution to security on its head. Would continued partnership be the American theme?
Rubio’s speech was the scene-setter for day two of the Munich conference. The buzz in the room was over how different, or not, it would be to the brazen attack on Europe and its values launched by J. D. Vance at the previous year’s conference. How would Rubio choose to respond to the attacks on Trump administration policy in the MSC report. His boss, after all, had been called by the report the world’s leading “demolition man.”
The answer that Rubio delivered to these questions was capable of being read as reassuring. The secretary of state spent a considerable time rehearsing the history of the common purpose that bound Europe and the United States together during the Cold War. He extolled the value of the European heritage to the creation and building of the United States and emphasized his view that Europe and America’s destinies are “intertwined.” He mentioned his own (distant) European roots.
But he also delivered a profoundly Trumpian interpretation of the current ills that beset the world, arguing that they were a product of delusions that set in after the end of the Cold War. The delusions were rhymed off—free trade; the supposed end of nation-states in favour of a borderless, globalized world; the building of “global” welfare states at the expense of security; mass migration as a civilizational threat; and what he called, ludicrously, the “climate cult.” De-industrialization and loss of control of supply chains were also in the mix.
Rubio said that the United States was once again taking on the burden of global leadership to rebuild and restore a Western civilization that had lost its way in the decades after 1991. He said the United States preferred to do this in partnership with Europe but was prepared, if necessary, to “do this alone.” In essence, the message was the transatlantic partnership will depend on Europe accepting American values going forward. The message was not one of partnership built on shared values or on the acceptance of difference. There was no mention in Rubio’s speech of the Russian war against Ukraine, so central to European concerns. Why not? Because it is not central to US concerns.
The Rubio speech was a take-it-or-leave-it valentine. Embrace me and everything I stand for, or I leave. The audience got to their feet in applause. I am not sure they fully understood the embellished card they got in class in their relief at getting one at all.
The last of the big guns to speak, on day two, was current Labour prime minister Sir Keir Starmer. For decades, since World War Two, British defence, security, and intelligence policy has rested on a “special relationship” with the United States. British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill did more than any British statesman to assiduously develop and preserve these links, an effort that spanned two world wars and the early days of the Cold War. Starmer is an heir to this history and determined to maintain the special relationship with the US.
Yet Starmer knows his country faces its own version of what Carney called, at Davos, the pursuit of a new, variable geometry in international relations. For Starmer, according to his address, that means three things.
First, making the United Kingdom stronger at home and willing to face the reality of both hybrid threats and the potential for war. The UK must build its own hard power, what Starmer called the “currency of the age.” As other European leaders have said at Munich, despite the staggering losses that Russia has faced in its war against Ukraine, once that war ends, the “wider danger,” as Starmer put it, for Europe will only increase.
The second element of British policy is drawing closer to Europe and contributing to a stronger Europe as a military and economic force in the world. This is a remarkable admission, coming only a decade after BREXIT, and a realization forced on the UK not just by the Ukraine war but by global trends. Starmer’s remarks on the need for a stronger Europe were echoed by many other leaders at the Munich Security Conference, including his co-panelist, European Union president Ursula van der Leyen.
The third consideration for the UK is the absolute need to maintain the transatlantic relationship. Here, Starmer took issue with some of Prime Minister Carney’s depictions of an age of “rupture.” He agreed, in part, on rupture to the wider canvas of international relations but was adamant that the transatlantic link must remain, with “radical renewal.” That element of renewal seems to come down to demonstrating a stronger UK and Europe to the US, not to any change in US posture. He saw no need to challenge US policies or worry about Trumpian initiatives (at least not publicly). According to Starmer, the reality on the ground is one of a close working relationship with the US on defence, security, and intelligence every day.
In the closest thing to a rebuke to Carney, Starmer said that we must not disregard the past and the long history of co-operation with the United States. That could prove, he said, a moment of real destruction. Here, he was trying to channel the spirit of Churchill, who faced many moments of despair about the UK–US relationship as Britain tried to draw the US into a wartime alliance in both world wars and maintain close defence ties after 1945.
Starmer may know his history, but his call was instead for a move from over-dependence to greater independence as a display of a UK commitment to stronger transatlantic ties. Churchill, with his own family ties to the US, was convinced, throughout his long political life, of the strong bonds and shared values between the UK and US and based many of his appeals—his “mobilization of the English language”—to those bonds. Starmer doesn’t quite have those rhetorical flights in his reach. But he also does not question the continued vitality of those bonds, whatever the evidence.
Greater strength at home, closer ties with Europe, sustained ties, and the maintenance of the special relationship with the US. This is the UK’s variable geometry. He argued, in an echo of a famous statement from the UK foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, on the eve of World War One, that if Britain cannot maintain this posture, or if extremist politics on the left or right take hold, “the lamps could go out across Europe.”
What he was not prepared to countenance was the idea that the lamps may be going out in the US. Let’s hope he is right about that. The signs are not encouraging.
Adapted from “Elephant revealed at the Munich Security Conference,” “Munich on (gulp) February 13,” “Valentines exchanged at Munich,” and “Keir Starmer vs. Mark Carney” by Wesley Wark (Substack). Reprinted with permission of the author.
The post In Munich, Leaders Say Goodbye to the Old World Order first appeared on The Walrus.
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